Shortlisted for the J.I. Segal Awards Best Quebec Book on a Jewish Theme • Shortlisted for the The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction

A poet rediscovers the artistic passion of her youth—and pays tribute to the teacher she thought she’d lost.

After thirty-five years as an “on-again, off-again, uncoached closet pianist,” poet and writer Robyn Sarah picked up the phone one day and called her old piano teacher, whom she had last seen in her early twenties. Music, Late and Soon is the story of her return to studying piano with the mentor of her youth. In tandem, she reflects on a previously unexamined musical past: a decade spent at Quebec’s Conservatoire de Musique, studying clarinet—ostensibly headed for a career as an orchestral musician, but already a writer at heart. A meditation on creative process in both music and literary art, this two-tiered musical autobiography interweaves past and present as it tracks the author’s long-ago defection from a musical career path and her late re-embrace of serious practice. At its core is a portrait of an extraordinary piano teacher and of a relationship remembered and renewed.

Robyn Sarah
Is the author of several poetry collections, two collections of short stories, and a book of essays on poetry. Her works have appeared widely in Canada and the United States, in publications that include The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times. Widely recognized and anthologized, Robyn Sarah has won awards for each of the genres in which she works, including the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the CBC literary competition, also for poetry; a National Magazine Award, and the QSPELL award for the best English-language fiction written by a Qu�bec author. She lives in Montr�al.

Robyn Sarah's profile page

Praise for Music, Late and Soon

"A deeply intimate exploration of the artistic process by a writer of remarkable maturity and poise. Unfailingly, her prose remains centred, rooted in humility, never drawing attention to itself. Her every word feels thoughtful, honest, and true. With this book, Sarah demonstrates that a life pursued artistically, when done so with sincerity and integrity, is a life lived spiritually, no matter what the discipline. Concert halls might be poorer for her career choice, but the literary world can count itself richly blessed."
—Juror Statement for The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction

"Her book is a gift to anyone who has left behind a pursuit and second-guessed that decision, though few of us could hope to have a teacher as inspirational as [hers] to coax us back into following our early passions. Describing their reunion, she writes: 'Momentarily, I’m flooded with that remembered sense of being in touch with something age-old, precious, mysterious, and profound (. . .).' It’s this profundity, the deep meaning of music, that Sarah captures so well in her beautiful and uplifting story."
—Montreal Review of Books

"[Y]ou don’t need to be a musician, nor do you need to have aspired to be a musician, to appreciate Music, Late and Soon. Anyone who has ever felt a vocation for something, pursued it, misplaced it, then tried to summon it again is apt to identify with Sarah’s story."
—Montreal Gazette

"Deeply interdisciplinary and challenging, it bears intimate witness as the internationally acclaimed Montréal poet reckons with the parallel strands of music and writing interwoven through her creative and inner lives."
—Montreal Serai

"Robyn Sarah’s memoir of a (more and less) musical life . . . is a luxuriant pleasure to read, due to the care for language and rhythm infuses it."
—Canadian Literature

"Part sonata, part symphony, far more than a memoir, Music, Late and Soon introduces a number of memorable characters worthy of a novel, and an array of orchestral instruments that modulate the prose, melodies, and personalities surrounding the author's life"
—Miramichi Reader

"It is a luxury to read a memoir about music written by an excellent writer who happens to have spent the greater part of her life as a musician."
—Musical Assumptions

"A heart-storming memoir . . . [Music, Late and Soon] is an immeasurably rich book, and a complicated human story, in which Robyn Sarah's writing is in full flight. It deserves a standing applause . . . I've no doubt it will be gratefully received and recognized as an original illumination of the struggle to claim one's own."
—William Aide (concert pianist, teacher, writer)

“In this historic moment, a book about the courage required to reclaim and salvage creative desire through discipline is about as necessary as clean water and air.”
—Michael Lithgow

Praise for Robyn Sarah

“Visual clarity, no-nonsense voice, compressed language, rhythmic prowess, and metaphoric agility. These qualities speak from a long-cultivated focus and bespeak a writer who pays fierce attention to the basic fact of being in the world.”
—The Walrus “As in her poetry, spare colloquial surfaces carry hidden depths . . . subtle and suggestive, working on several levels at once.”
—Globe and Mail “Her distinctively digressive style allows Sarah to accommodate tremendous complexity in her stories . . . drawing us further and further down into the moment and at the same time showing us how the moment is textured by memory and experience.”
—The Malahat Review “[Her stories] lead us towards, and finally right into the middle of awarenesses that we hadn’t had before. They leave you feeling like this: suspicious that you’ve missed something, teeth slightly on edge . . . there is a faint sound of excellently played music somewhere . . . one may be failing in what one wants to do. What did that little piece mean? Will I read it again? The reader reads it again and experiences this network of feelings again, just like the first time. It is very powerful art.”
—Hugh Hood